In the processing of edible poultry, such as chickens and turkeys, it is desirable to separate the meat from the skeletal structure of the poultry carcass so that the meat can be marketed separately, without the bone contained in the meat. The all meat product can be attractively packaged and sold at the grocery store, and can be sold to restaurants where the meat can be cooked and served in sandwiches or served in relatively small portions which are easy to eat and without requiring the consumer to separate the meat from the bone.
The in past, the process of filleting poultry parts, such as thighs and breasts, has been achieved by hand, with workers manually stripping the meat from the bone. More recently, automated equipment has become available which will function to separate the meat from the bone of poultry thighs, wherein the bone is of substantially rectilinear shape and the meat can be scraped longitudinally off the bone. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,402,423, 3,533,128, 3,672,000, 4,068,350, 4,327,463, 4,377,884, 4,402,112 and 4,495,675 all disclose apparatus for deboning poultry thighs and similar products wherein the bone is moved along its length through scraping blades which tend to scrape the meat from the bone.
Although automated equipment has been developed which successfully functions to debone poultry thighs, the skeletal structure of the breast and related parts of the poultry carcass are of more complex configuration, and it is more difficult to separate the meat and bone from this portion of the carcass. As a result, the conventional methods for separating the meat from the skeletal structure of the poultry breast and related poultry parts has been performed by hand. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,385,419 illustrates equipment wherein eviscerated poultry carcasses are conveyed on supports along a path and workers cut the poultry parts from the carcass by hand at several stations along the path.
More recently, automated equipment has been developed which operates to remove the meat from the breast portion of the poultry carcass. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,593,432 discloses a system by which previously eviscerated poultry carcasses with the wings and the legs removed therefrom are eviscerated by mounting each carcass with its visceral cavity extending about a mandrel, and moving the mandrel along a path through a gate which tends to gouge and scrape the meat from the carcass.